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Paper short abstract

This paper explores the role of cooperation and trust, viewing them as near-universal engines of sociability itself. Such outlook, accompanied by fitting methodology, promises to enrich the existing outlooks on o human negotiation, identity and conflict strategies and the resulting polarization.

Paper long abstract

The aim of this paper is to draw attention to the subject of cooperative behavior and trust formation, framing them not as mere artifacts of social reality, but rather as foundational substrate that merely requires to become the center of our focus once again. Ultimately, I would like to introduce what I tentatively call: "Cooperation-oriented Paradigm" for social sciences.

From the most fundamental nature of communication itself, to maintenance of all vital social institutions, laws, customs and even division of labor - cooperation permeates and enables every aspect of our social existence: more often than not, without our own awareness.

Where as concepts of power and conflict have dominated the minds of modern social scholars (from Marx to Foucault), the much broader and more common realm of cooperative behavior remains a social-science's biggest blind spot.

Without understanding the nature of cooperation and mechanics of trust, our understanding of conflict is incomplete, shuffling us towards polarized world preoccupied by power. Cooperation gives conflict context, and trust gives solutions longevity. Without those: conflict becomes the norm, and power becomes a virtue.

Looking into already existing research done theory of games, evolutionary psychology, semiotics and pragmatic fields of philosophy, this paper seeks to establish a more nuanced tools for understanding asymmetrical forms of social structures. Modeling them as networks of agencies, investments and risk-regulators all operating towards a desired non-zero-sum goal, mutualism becomes the governing concern.

Through understanding cooperation, not as anomalies but as core human social strategies, our horizons could greatly expand.

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This paper examines how illusion plays a role in maintaining networks of asymmetrical cooperation. I draw on my ethnographic findings about cosplayer fantrepreneurship in neoliberal Japan to demonstrate how illusion is used in cooperation, and why cooperation persists after the collapse of illusion.

Paper long abstract

While cooperation is usually maintained through reciprocity and compliance, I argue that illusion can also play a significant role, specifically in cooperation involving power asymmetry. Illusion, which involves deception and concealment, usually serves as a strategy to maintain mutual trust while disguising unfairness and exploitation as genuine and reciprocal relationships. However, in some cases, illusion becomes the very key value that the deluded party seeks to pursue and protect, making illusion the core of a network of cooperation. In addition, even when the illusion is exposed, the disillusioned party would still seek negotiation and/or alternation of the forms of cooperation when interdependence is maintained to some extent. I draw on two case studies from my fieldwork on the commercialisation of cosplay in Japan to demonstrate the involvement of illusion in asymmetrical cooperation. The first case study examines the cooperation between celebrity cosplayers and the advertising industry. Despite the promise of transforming a hobby into a career, the façade of reciprocity conceals feelings of alienation and the exploitation of emotional labour imposed on cosplayers. Still, disillusioned celebrity cosplayers would choose a negotiated stance because of their interdependent relationship with the industry. The second case study examines the parasocial relationships between cosplayer fantrepreneurs and their fans. I analyse how illusions of intimacy and exclusivity are produced and sustained through consumerist practices by fans and neoliberal entrepreneurial logic adopted by cosplayers. I also shed light on how cosplayers and their fans cooperate to maintain illusions for their respective purposes.

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Focusing on senior–junior relations in South Korean workplaces, this paper shows how cooperation emerges through hierarchical positioning. Asymmetrical obligations produce relational ambivalence as collaboration, exploitation, and affectivity intertwine under neoliberal conditions.

Paper long abstract

This paper revisits the anthropological question of compatibilities and tensions between cooperation and hierarchy through an examination of South Korean senior–junior (sŏnbae–hubae) relationships. These age-graded, patronage-like ties within institutions such as universities and workplaces are foundational to South Korean social life, functioning as gateways to professional knowledge and opportunities. The relationship is hierarchical yet oriented toward cooperation: seniors command authority and extract labor and deference, juniors repay with loyalty and favors—while both perform mutual care.

Drawing on interviews with Korean professionals, I explore how cooperation between seniors and juniors must be actively accomplished, even as seniors automatically occupy positions of hierarchical authority—a mechanical effect of entering an institution earlier. This cooperation is indispensable to both parties. Seniors depend on juniors for task execution and are responsible for them to their own superiors, while juniors depend on seniors to learn institutional expectations and access opportunities. Yet within this mutual dependence, seniors have considerable latitude to extract labor and deference, while juniors have limited recourse against exploitation; the boundary between cooperation and coerced coordination is blurred, as institutional positions rather than individual intentions organize interaction.

This historically sedimented system increasingly collides with the egalitarian expectations of Korean youth raised in a liberal democracy who must navigate competitive, individualizing neoliberal environments while remaining bound to non-voluntary hierarchical obligations. By examining this extreme case, the paper contributes to debates on cooperation in polarized contexts, showing how cooperation emerges as asymmetrical reciprocity that enables coordination, reproduces hierarchy, and sustains possibilities for mutual care across cohorts.

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Based on long-term ethnographic research among agricultural cooperatives in post-socialist rural Romania, this paper examines cooperation not as a normative ideal, but as a historically situated, power-laden strategy that both mitigates and reproduces social and economic polarisation.

Paper long abstract

Based on long-term ethnographic research among agricultural communities in post-socialist rural Romania, this paper examines cooperation not as a taken-for-granted social good, but as a historically situated and power-laden social practice in a polarised agrarian economy. Focusing on German (Swabian) villages in the Satu Mare region, the paper analyses multiple cooperative forms that have emerged since the collapse of socialist collectivisation, including large-scale agricultural associations, newly established, subsidy-driven cooperatives, and informal, quasi-cooperative collaborations.

Drawing on ethnographic material and the concepts of social embeddedness and weak ties, the paper explores how cooperation is actively produced, negotiated, and contested across these organisational forms. Long-standing agricultural associations have enabled communities to retain collective control over land and to integrate into global food chains, while simultaneously generating exclusionary dynamics, high entry barriers, and asymmetries between professionalised management and landowning members. Newer cooperative initiatives and informal collaborations, by contrast, foreground flexibility, innovation, and horizontal knowledge-sharing, yet remain vulnerable to market volatility, labour precarity, and dependence on external funding and policy regimes.

By comparing these cooperative arrangements, the paper highlights how cooperation simultaneously bridges and reinforces polarisation: between global markets and local livelihoods, capital-intensive agribusiness and small-scale producers, and stability and adaptability. Rather than approaching cooperation as a normative ideal or a singular solution to rural crisis, the analysis foregrounds its ambivalent character as both a site of collective possibility and a field of power. In doing so, the paper contributes to broader anthropological debates on cooperation as a contested, relational practice in a polarised world.

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The death of the Maaori king in 2024 provoked a logistical nightmare for the hosts of his funeral: how to accommodate 100,000 mourners. In this paper, I examine the co-operation required of a workforce bound by kinship, and assess the extent to which kotahitanga, or unity, was achieved.

Paper long abstract

The death of the Maaori king—Tuheitia Pootatau te Wherowhero VII—in 2024 provoked a logistical nightmare for the hosts [hau kainga] of his funeral: how to accommodate an estimated 100,000 mourners. Though exceptional, an event of this scale is operationalised through kinship, and relies on the routine performance of collective, voluntary labour. These forms of labour, otherwise referred to as "mahi aroha" [work performed out of love] are often rallied in the midst of, or as a response to, crisis (Cram 2021). The current political landscape in Aotearoa [New Zealand] presents such a crisis, in which 'the most overtly racist government in decades' proposed or enacted sweeping, legislative shifts to existing Indigenous rights (Aotearoa Independent Monitoring Mechanism 2024). Indeed, as a response to the crisis, in January 2024, the late King Tuheitia convened the national unity forum, a pan-tribal gathering, premised on fostering kotahitanga, or unity, among Maaori. However, kotahitanga is a cultural principle—a lofty ideal—that is often pursued, yet rarely achieved. For example, the forum drew criticism for the purported lack of accessibility for Maaori in low-income households to attend. In this paper, while acknowledging the validity of such concerns, I draw attention to the co-operation required to sustain such events through the voluntary labour, the 'mahi aroha', of a workforce bound by the obligations of kinship to perform it. In doing so, I seek to assess the extent to which kotahitanga [unity] was achieved, however temporal, or whether it is indeed a 'mirage'.

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This paper traces novel and experimental collaborations among pharmaceutical researchers, biotech CEOs, lawyers, and others invested in Huntington's disease research, as they push back against the extreme secrecy of the pharmaceutical industry, in order to 'speed up' research.

Paper long abstract

With potential profits in the billions, and an ever-increasing demand for growth, the pharmaceutical industry is notoriously competitive and secretive. Collaboration is tightly and punitively regulated by contracts, patents, product licenses, and nondisclosure agreements. A common justification for this is that the potential rewards (profit, prestige) will incentivise better research; however this is largely not the case. Instead, excessive secrecy leads to research delays, due to unnecessary and time-consuming duplication of experiments, lengthy publication and patent approval processes, and drawn-out legal battles.

This paper is based on ethnographic fieldwork with a network of highly dedicated researchers working on drug discovery for Huntington’s disease – a currently untreatable and fatal hereditary neurodegenerative disease. This network includes academic researchers, biotech CEOs, lawyers, and others, across various institutions and countries, who have been collaborating on scientific and infrastructural projects to ‘speed up’ research. In doing so, they are pushing back against the norms of the industry: seeking more permissive funding, negotiating less restrictive contracts with pharmaceutical companies, sharing data and resources, and actively creating new spaces and platforms for collaboration.

Importantly, these collaborations and co-operations are ever-changing – although some collaboration is facilitated by contracts or working agreements, this is not a fixed or official network. Rather, it is transforming and transformative, as researchers seek creative and novel ways of working together, which must nevertheless remain attentive to the demands of pharmaceutical companies and the needs and desires of patients, and responsive to the successes and failures of the science and the market.

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Majority of tattooists in South Korea depend on cooperation and collaboration in order to start and maintain their businesses. Focusing on the tattoo scene in Korea, this research explores the links between cooperation, collaboration and competition.

Paper long abstract

In South Korea (hereafter Korea) obtaining a tattooist licence presents a challenge for aspiring tattoo artists. Constitutionally, tattooing is considered as a medical procedure which can only be performed by medical professionals. Thus, majority of tattooists in Korea are unable to legalize their practice. Although the tattoo scene in Korea is not visible, it is thriving and attracting both Korean and international clients. Public discourse analysis shows that many aspiring tattooists rely on a network of local and international tattoo artists in order to obtain knowledge about tattooing, and to stay up-to-date with industry regulations, since they are unable to do so via legal channels. In recent years, there has been a shift in Korean society’s attitude towards tattoos. In parallel with this shift, Korea’s General Assembly passed the “Tattooist Act” in September 2025, which will become effective within two years. “Tattooist Act” allows non-medical professionals to obtain a tattooing licence. Firstly, I investigate the current state of the tattoo scene in Korea. Specifically, I focus on how the collaboration among Korean tattooists, as well as their collaboration with international tattooists, define the tattoo industry in Korea. Then, I shift my focus to the anticipated change in Korean constitution. Once tattooist as a profession becomes more commonplace, and once tattoo businesses become more visible, will the network of Korean tattoo artists become competitors instead of collaborators in Korea’s neoliberal environment? By focusing on the tattoo scene in Korea, I aim to explore the links between cooperation, collaboration and competition.

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Drawing on ethnography and interviews, we propose the concept of 'care-driven non-conflictual activism' to explain how low-visibility cooperation in the form of mutual help, individual civic acts and bridge-building talk sustains civic life under polarisation and beyond protest in Poland.

Paper long abstract

In a polarised political environment, cooperation is often assumed to belong either to ‘civil society’ as an unproblematic good or to ‘activism’ as collective contention. Drawing on ethnographic observations (2015–2024) and two-wave interviews/focus groups in Poland and among Polish migrants (2017–2021), this paper reframes cooperation as a low-visibility civic repertoire sustained through ordinary relationships rather than organisations or protest events. We analyse three cooperative practices that respondents frequently describe as ‘just normal’: (1) neighbourhood mutual help (shopping, dog-walking, homework support) intensified during COVID-19; (2) single-handed problem-solving that substitutes for distrusted institutions (care work, small-scale environmental repair, ad hoc assistance to vulnerable strangers); and (3) conversational cooperation—patient face-to-face work of finding common ground and persuading across ideological difference. Conceptually, we propose a concept of "care-driven non-conflictual activism": politically consequential cooperation that avoids overt antagonism, is anchored in relational durability, and circulates as ‘social energy’ across life courses and generations. The argument bridges classic anthropological accounts of reciprocity and moral obligation with recent debates on everyday politics and civic agency, showing how cooperative acts build social infrastructures that can outlast protest cycles. Empirically, this case demonstrates why cooperation persists under mistrust, as a practical mode of inhabiting polarised social worlds. Bringing these mundane cooperations into view invites a redefinition of political participation in contemporary Europe, one attentive to care, endurance, and relational work rather than confrontation alone.

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Based on ethnographic research in northeastern Slovenia, the paper examines farmers’ cooperation using a moral economy approach. The study shows how moral sentiments, perceived and evaded responsibilities, and market inequalities shape small-scale cooperation and limit large-scale collective action.

Paper long abstract

Farmers cooperate, for example, to facilitate harvesting and to strengthen local or international communities. Some rural cooperation has been encouraged by the Common Agricultural Policy. Based on ethnographic fieldwork (2018–2022) in northeastern Slovenia, where agrarian economists have identified insufficient cooperation, this paper contributes to the perspective on the absence of cooperation by also examining how farmers do cooperate, even when such practices remain politically invisible or economically less significant. Using an interpretative approach to moral economy, which assumes that people experience their lives within complex processes of judgement involving moral, material, and social power differentials in relation to others, the analysis foregrounds moral sentiments regarding the responsibilities and rights of individuals and institutions. The study shows that farmers increasingly associate cooperation with moral sentiments of betrayal, resentment, and unfairness. These are linked to the partial collapse of the Yugoslav cooperative system, experiences of unfair membership and management within cooperatives and joint sales in subsequent years, and are reinforced by the most recent subsidy system, widely perceived as favouring large agricultural market players. However, farmers do cooperate: in cooperatives across the state; in solidarity groups organised for work and socialising; in joint sales through courtyard shops; and in ecological farming. These forms of cooperation are usually relatively small-scale and niche, characterised by a strong entrepreneurial logic and the maintenance of individual autonomy. This aligns with farmers’ views that large-scale market cooperation is financially harmful, impossible due to market domination by agricultural companies, and politically undesirable as it reproduces existing inequalities.

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Pastoralism fundamentally involves the reciprocal cooperation between herders and livestock. Herders care for their animals who in turn provide the necessary means for human survival. What forms can pastoralist cooperation take other than those primarily motivated by subsistence or survival?

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This paper considers cooperation in the context of increased diversity of livelihoods among Maasai pastoralists located in northern Tanzania. Herders care for their livestock who in turn produce the means necessary for human existence; ‘people and cattle are bound together in a symbiosis of survival’ (Evans-Pritchard 1969). Certain pressures – environmental, political, economic – are challenging the feasibility of small-scale pastoralism. Many pastoralists have increasingly diversified their livelihood strategies, meaning that the reciprocal cooperation often ascribed to small-scale pastoralism no longer defines their survival. What becomes of this kind of cooperation when the means for survival can be, and often must be, found elsewhere?

Historically, the anthropology of East African pastoralist societies has noted the central role of livestock in the making and perpetuation of social life, emphasising the cultural significance of livestock beyond subsistence and survival. It has especially presented livestock as figures that help mediate uncertainty and misfortune. Given the current context of the climate crisis and various political pressures that challenge the lifeworlds of Maasai pastoralists, such a role of livestock appears critical. The paper thus focuses on the ways that this kind of significance manifests itself in current contexts and how this might help to think about cooperation. Drawing from an ethnographic case study of livelihood diversification among Maasai pastoralists in Tanzania, this paper ultimately asks, what forms can pastoralist cooperation take other than those primarily motivated by subsistence or survival and how are these expressed in the lives of pastoralists today?